Into The Unknown: Interstellaria Gets Beta Trailer

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When I was growing up, I dreamt of going to space for the isolation. I was one of those weird kids who thought the idea of being somewhere quiet, undisturbed and far away from the world was quite appealing. Then I played Mass Effect and realised space is much cooler when you and a group of friends grab a ship and head off into the unknown together, exploring unexpected worlds and changing lives as a big happy space family. With that in mind, this beta trailer for Interstellaria really made me stop and take notice. My life definitely needs a more avenues for building a cool team of space buddies to kill stuff and explore worlds with.

Looks pretty cool right? Unfortunately, the beta this trailer was made using is currently only open to Kickstarter backers which doesn’t help those of us who didn’t back it, but the presentation seems pretty cool at least. That soundtrack is catchy, there’s just enough detail in the characters on the ship for them to feel unique and not enough games take Interstellaria’s lead by having cool space ships built inside chunks of space rock. Sleek can be cool, but space rocks just feel at home in the deep dark blackness of intergalactic travel.

Scott Manley played a bit of it…it sssort is, sssorta isn’t. The platformery bits are click-and-pathfinding, and the space combat exists, with some positioning and power management but it’s not FTL (yet).

Sounds cool but it’s a shame about the throwback graphics. I can’t believe it would cost the dev team THAT much to use actually decent graphics for this. The whole “we’re indie so we’re not going to have nice graphics but aren’t these throwback 8-bit pics awesome!” bit has grown extremely old.

While I can appreciate that it allows for some cool game ideas to at least see the light of day, it’d be nice for these devs to also remember that they’re designing for the PC, not the NES.

Exactly. Detailed 2D art requires finesse. You would need a dedicated artist and a lot of time to get it done. Many of these games are made by 1-2 people, neither of whom is an artist. The beauty of pixel art is that you don’t have to be particularly accomplished at drawing to make something that looks nice.

Going better than pixels without a proper artist on the team will lead to a horrible mess.

It could easily take twice as much time (and hence, money) to produce more “modern” graphics, even 2D. I do agree that the nostalgia craze has gone overboard, but that’s also a blessing for developers that wouldn’t have the resources to implement their ideas otherwise (specially in this game’s case, which requires a ton of resources).

Dev Here. Normally I don’t really reply to comments sections, but since this has more to do with financials I thought I’d dive right.

Firstly, it’s important to realize my budget is INCREDIBLY small. Truthfully most people don’t have much indication of the time/difficulty involved with creating a game, or the actual costs of it. Although 28k sounds like a lot to the layman, to anyone involved in either game creation as a business or even small business investment you’d see its nothing.

First – I only received about 26k after taxes and fees from kickstarter. Another 4k would alter be taken up from actual taxes. So in total the BUSINESS (not me personally) received 22k.

Second – I immediately send 11k to chipzel for a full soundtrack (and trust me, this is under paying her. She’s amazing) leaving 11k left.

Third- in order to keep everything covered an safe for everyone involved ~1k-2k in both business setup, licensing, and legal feels. We’re about 9k here.

Fourth – Software involved making the game is purchased here. I could have rented the software as well, but in the event of disaster I wanted to keep the game going. This is ~2k but really it was more like 2.5. We’re at about 7k here

Fifth – SFX, a bit of marketing and web costs, etc… this is about ~1k. We’re at 6k here.

Now ready for the really crazy part? Almost 100% of these costs were spent IN THE FIRST MONTH. Why? Because I wanted ot make sure the game gets made no matter what. That means since last december until now I’ve been working with a budget of about 6k. Now I don’t know about you, but I couldn’t live off 6k. Needless to say I’ve kept my full time job, but I still log 40 hours a week into developing the game.

As for the pixel art look… well I love pixel art and pixel art games. Not everyone does, and that’s ok. When I set out to make the game, I made a game for myself. The kickstarter, the testing builds, and every trailer, has been my attempt to gauge “does anyone else like this too?” and from what I can tell, they do. I’d rather make the game I love and enjoy, than a game that caters to some one else and I hate

Well like I said, I think it looks interesting and probably will be awesome. I’ve just grown weary of seeing all the pixel art of late, that’s all. I realize that it’s quite frequently due to necessity, so it’s not bothering me THAT much. And in some cases, it really matches the gameplay, too.

Well I certainly admire your dedication but I would question the wisdom of splashing 11k up front for the soundtrack if that is the situation you have to work from. But you seem to have a firm plan of how you want to use/are using the cash so good luck to you and I hope you manage to create the game you want and I will be looking out for the full release in future.

If there’s one thing the dev (coldrice) has been (or at least has seemed to be) is very dedicated and passionate about the project. It’s been fun to watch – at one point I challenged him that he was getting feature creep, and he responded in kind with good reasons for the work he was doing. From the beginning I’ve been excited by the project. I’m not a huge kickstarter supporter, but this is one I’m glad I backed and am happy is coming to fruition.

Honestly, your game looks like what I wished Starbound was like. Exploring space without nearly godlike ability to modify my ships, going at it either alone (and vastly outpowered) or with a team and making actual headway. It hearkens back to my old fantasy of being the officer of my own Starship Enterprise, including all the grit.

Wonderful writing style, LKD. Thank you. In a strange coincidence, I am just about to sit down with some (hopefully, well-earned) Chinese food to watch Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen do their thing in the old classic “The Ark in Space” Dr Who episodes. Highly recommended, by the way. You reminded me of The Ark, floating there… you also reminded me how much I was deeply let-down and disappointed by Chris Nolan’s latest film experience of an almost similar title. Which is completely an unrelated co-incidence I’m sure… absolutely. I wouldn’t have associated myself with it. If some are saying he’s supposed to be the next Stanley Kubrick, is there really no hope left for hard sci-fi in film? Or indeed, humanity? Jelly baby, anyone?